Sheldon Jackson (May 18, 1834 – May 2, 1909) was a
Presbyterian minister,
missionary, and
political leader. During this career he travelled about one million miles (1.6 million km) and established more than one hundred
missions and
churches, mostly in the
Western United States. He is best remembered for his extensive work in
Colorado and thereafter during the final quarter of the 19th century in the massive, rugged, and remote
Alaska Territory, which in 1959 would become the 49th U.S. state of
Alaska, and his efforts to suppress Native American languages.

He wanted to become a missionary overseas, but the Presbyterian board told the 5-foot Jackson, who had weak eyesight and was often ill, that he would be better suited for duty in the United States.[2] He hence first worked in the north-central and western United States, which were still vast and lightly populated areas during the
American Civil War and thereafter. Jackson's first assignment was at the
Choctaw mission in
Oklahoma Territory, where he worked until poor health forced him to go back East in 1859. After his recovery he was appointed to
La Crescent in
Houston County in southeastern
Minnesota, where he extended his field hundreds of miles beyond the actual station. He spent ten years in Minnesota and
Wisconsin, having organized or assisted in the establishment of twenty-three churches.[1]

Jackson's travels took him throughout the American West. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, a huge territory was opened to him. In the summer of 1869, Jackson went on a missionary tour using the railroad and stage lines, establishing a church a day.[1]

A friend once said of Jackson and his dedication to the cause of
Jesus Christ: "He would not hesitate if he thought he could save an old-hardened sinner, to mount a locomotive and let fly a Gospel message at a group by the wayside while going at a speed of forty miles an hour." [2]

However, an area of the United States even more challenging awaited him.

In 1877, Jackson began his work in Alaska. He became committed to the Christian spiritual, educational, and economic wellbeing of the
Alaska Natives. He founded numerous schools and training centers that served these native people. His protégés included the Rev.
Edward Marsden, a
Tsimshian missionary among the
Tlingit.

Reverend Jackson had considerable common ground with another important American in the region. Captain
Michael A. Healy of the
United States Revenue Cutter Service, commander of the
USRC Bear, was also known for his concern for the native Alaskan
Eskimos. During this time, Captain Healy, who had been the first
African American to command a U.S. ship, was essentially the law enforcement officer of the U.S. government in the vast territory.[4] In his twenty years of service between
San Francisco and
Point Barrow, he acted as a judge, doctor, and policeman to Alaskan Natives, merchant seamen and whaling crews. His ship also carried doctors and provided the only available trained medical care to many isolated communities.[5] The Native people throughout the vast regions of the north came to know and respect this skipper and called his ship "Healy's Fire Canoe".[5] The Bear and Captain Healy were reportedly an inspiration for author
Jack London, and feature prominently, along with Jackson, in
James A. Michener's famous novel about Alaska.

Captain Healy and the Reverend Jackson became allies of a sort. During visits to
Siberia (across the
Bering Sea from the Alaskan coast), Healy had observed that the
Chukchi people in the remote Asian area had domesticated
reindeer and used them for food, travel, and clothing.[6] With the reductions in the seal and whale populations which had arisen from growing commercial fishing activities, and to aid Eskimos for transportation, Reverend Jackson and Captain Healy made numerous trips into Siberia and helped import nearly 1,300 reindeer to bolster the livelihoods of Native people. These became valuable tools in the provision of food, clothing and other necessities for Native peoples. This work was noted in the New York Sun newspaper in 1894.[6]

While Captain Healy was more of a law enforcement officer, Jackson was a humanitarian. Convinced that Americanization was the key to their future, Jackson actively discouraged the use of indigenous languages, traditional cultures, and spiritualities. Because he was worried that Native cultures would vanish with no records of their past (a process which his own educational efforts accelerated), he collected artifacts from those cultures on his many trips throughout the region.

Jackson believed that political means would further his goals for the Alaskan people. He became a close friend of U.S. President
Benjamin Harrison. He worked toward the passage of the
Organic Act of 1884, which ensured that Alaska would begin to set up a judicial system and receive aid for education. As a result, Sheldon Jackson became the First General Agent of Education in Alaska.

Education policy

In 1885, Jackson was appointed General Agent of Education in the Alaska Territory.[7] Concurrent with the values of the expanding colonial administration, Jackson undertook a policy of deliberate acculturation. In particular, Jackson advocated an
English-only policy which forbade the use of indigenous languages. In allocating $25,000 of federal education monies in 1888 he wrote, "[N]o books in any Indian language shall be used, or instruction given in that language to Indian pupils." In a letter to newly hired teachers in 1887 he wrote:

It is the purpose of the government in establishing schools in Alaska to train up English speaking American citizens. You will therefore teach in English and give special prominence to instruction in the English language…. [Y]our teaching should be pervaded by the spirit of the Bible."[8] (emphasis added)

The legacy of Jackson's educational policy is clearly evident in the now moribund state of Alaska's indigenous languages.[9] Decades of punishment for speaking Native languages resulted in greatly decreased transmission, with the result that few indigenous Alaskans still speak indigenous languages in the 21st century.[10]

Jackson was arrested and jailed in
Sitka, for obstructing a public highway with a fence and building used for a school that he had constructed for the education of Indian children. The officials who charged him did not want the Indians educated. But the next year, President
Grover Cleveland, Harrison's political rival, fired four territorial officials responsible for Jackson's arrest and dismissed the false charges against Jackson.[2]

Death and legacy

Jackson died on May 2, 1909, in
Asheville,
North Carolina, sixteen days short of his 75th birthday. He had been planning a trip to Denver at the time of his death to attend meetings three weeks later of the Presbyterian general assembly, to visit some of the chapels that he had built in Colorado, and to renew acquaintances with old friends. He is interred in his hometown of Minaville, New York.[2]

Sheldon Jackson Street is found in the College Village subdivision of
Anchorage, a neighborhood next to the
University of Alaska Anchorage campus where the streets are named for colleges and universities (the street forms a loop with
Emory Street).

Jackson’s personal papers include photographs by
Eadweard Muybridge and H.H. Brodeck. The
Presbyterian Historical Society also holds the Sheldon Jackson Library, which was Jackson’s personal library donated by him to the historical society. The
Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka maintains three to four thousand Alaskan artifacts collected by Jackson during his lifetime.

References

^
abcdefLaura King Van Dusen, "Sheldon Jackson's Fairplay Church: One of More than One Hundred in Western U.S.; Jackson Arrested, Jailed in Alaska; Contributed to Settlement of the West", Historic Tales from Park County: Parked in the Past (
Charleston,
South Carolina: The History Press, 2013), ISBN978-1-62619-161-7, pp. 69-77.